Like millions of people around the world, I was hooked by the figure skating competition at the Olympics. It enthralled me with its extraordinary display of prowess and grace, but also with its fragility, its constant sense of precariousness. Years of hard work could go poof at any second.
As I watched, I kept thinking of the gorgeous new movie Kokuho. I'll explain why later. But first, let me say that Kokuho is set in and around the world of Kabuki, the 400-year-old theatrical form that lies near the heart of Japanese culture. Spanning half a century and running nearly three hours, this quiet epic is the top-grossing Japanese live action film of all time.
You can see why. It's bursting with emotion and beauty; its costumes, hair and makeup are dazzling. Sang-il Lee's film tells a compelling story about friendship, the weight of history, the quest for perfection and the torturous road to becoming a living national treasure — which is what the word "kokuho" means.
When we first meet the hero, Kikuo, he's 14 and playing a female role in an excerpt from a famous Kabuki play. (Men play all the roles in Kabuki.) His performance is seen by a Kabuki star, Hanai (Ken Watanabe) who's impressed by his talent. When Kikuo's yakuza father is murdered by a rival gang, Hanai takes him in as a protégé, teaching him to become an onnagata — a male actor who plays female roles.
There is one snag. Hanai already has a son of the same age, Shunsuke, who is slated to be his artistic heir, and, in the Kabuki world, artistic status passes from generation to generation. Naturally, we expect Kikuo and Shunsuke to become rivals, and in a way they do.
Yet as they share the sometimes cruel ordeal of their training, they become friends and acting partners. Each sees how the other is trapped. Despite his fanatical dedication, Kikuo is considered a low-born outsider — complete with a yakuza tattoo on his back — that the hidebound Kabuki culture doesn't want to accept.
In contrast, Shunsuke is expected to become a luminary like his dad — even though, at some gut level, he doesn't even like Kabuki. Born into a role he doesn't want, he'd rather party than practice.
We follow their entwined fates over the decades, a sometimes melodramatic dance of triumph and humiliation, complete with sexual rivalries and ignored children. Played with riveting, dry-ice intensity by Ryo Yoshizawa, Kikuo becomes positively Faustian in his desire for greatness, while the less gifted but far more likable Shunsuke (the very enjoyable Ryusei Yokohama) labors to escape his destiny.
With their friendship providing the dramatic pull, Kokuho tackles grand themes. It paints a portrait of a late 20th century Japan still suffocating beneath musty ideas about birth and cultural inheritance. And in Kikuo's struggle to become Japan's greatest Kabuki actor, we feel the chilly isolation of devoting yourself to an art form so demanding that it leaves little room for ordinary human connection.
We also have the pleasure of learning about a ravishing art alien to most of us. Normally when we hear the phrase "Kabuki theater" in America — often in the political realm — it's used derisively, to suggest something ritualized, empty, pro forma.
But watching Kokuho, you see how shallow this notion is. The Kabuki scenes we're shown are thrillingly performed by Yoshizawa and Yokohama who each spent a year and a half training to do the film. They make us feel the primal power in Kabuki's blend of dance, music and acting as it tells tales of love, suicides or women who reveal themselves to be serpents.
Just as Olympic skaters must perform certain compulsory leaps and loops — and are judged on how well they do them — so Kabuki actors have certain gestures they must perform in a role, and they are expected to do them perfectly. Yet one can be technically flawless and still be middling. For a skater, the true measure of greatness is the expressive artistry of the free skate. For a Kabuki actor like Kikuo, what makes you a national treasure isn't merely doing every dance and gesture to perfection but imbuing them with a huge, almost mythic emotion.
Kokuho captures how wondrous that can be, and the pain required to get there.
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